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N-Gage for Analogue Pocket v1.2.0

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@plasticbugs plasticbugs released this 24 Oct 06:28

N-Gage for Analogue Pocket — 1.2.0

A feature release:

  • Game saves. Each game's saves now live on the SD card and are still
    there the next time you play;
  • Add N-Gage games.html, on the card beside the core's files, turns
    your game zips into games for the Pocket: drop them on it, all at once,
    and they go onto the SD card with their names in the Pocket's menu. No
    Python, no command line, and it works offline;
  • the menu's Scanlines and Shadow Mask are now one list, Screen Effect.

The core boots the Nokia N-Gage's own firmware on the Pocket and runs
games.

This core does not rebuild the phone's board. It runs NGVM, a small
machine with just enough of an ARM phone for the Symbian user side of your
own phone's firmware to run unchanged. The CPU, an ARMv4T, is gateware; a
small kernel (ngvm.bin) stands in for the phone's.

No firmware or games are included. You need your own N-Gage's firmware
dump and your own games.

Install

  1. Unzip onto the SD card root, keeping the folders.

  2. Into Assets/ngage/common/, next to ngvm.bin, put:

    • sym.rom: the N-Gage's firmware (the "BIOS"), about 18 MB. Dump it
      from your own phone. A compatible one is bios/Nokia/N-Gage/SYM.ROM
      in the retrobios repository on
      GitHub: the firmware this core was tested on, 18,612,224 bytes, md5
      64a95a4a884cf4cc15a566b856603193. Rename it to sym.rom, in lower
      case;
    • one .img per game, made from the game's files.

    The easy way does both. With the SD card in your computer, open
    Assets/ngage/common/Add N-Gage games.html from it in Microsoft Edge
    or Google Chrome, on Windows or a Mac. Press "Choose my SD card", pick
    the card's Assets folder, then drop your game zips (and SYM.ROM)
    on the page. Each game gets a green tick when it is on the card, with
    its entry in the Pocket's menu. A short film on the page shows every
    step. Other browsers download the files for you to copy over.

    Or, with Python 3, the builder in this zip:

    python3 mkdrive.py --from vcop.zip --out vcop.img

    The game list (Assets/ngage/plasticbugs.ngage/*.json) names the .img
    and the .sav each game uses. The page writes these entries; by hand,
    add a JSON there for any other game.

  3. Loading takes a while: up to about 50 MB go through the Pocket's loader,
    and the screen stays black until it is done. The phone then boots as it
    would, Nokia logo first.

From 1.1.0 or earlier, copy the whole zip over: the bitstream,
ngvm.bin and the game list have changed. Your sym.rom and .img
files are not in it, and your menu settings are kept, except a Shadow
Mask setting, which goes back to Off: choose it again under Screen Effect.

Games you added to the list yourself need a save entry, or they all
share one save file, ngage.sav. In the game's JSON, after the .img
entry, add { "id": 4, "filename": "<game>.sav" }, as the games in this
zip have.

Rebuild your .img files with this zip's mkdrive.py if you made them
for 0.1.0-alpha and the game is larger than 24 MB, or is Tomb Raider, Tony
Hawk's Pro Skater or Pandemonium.

Controls

Pocket phone
d-pad arrows
A / B 5 / 7
X OK
Y 9
L / R the soft keys
Select #
Start OK
Select + R the on-screen keypad, and put it away

The core's menu has a slider for each of A, B, X, Y, L and R: at 0 to 9
the button is that digit key of the phone, at 10 it is as in the table.

The on-screen keypad is for every key the buttons do not reach.
Press Select and R together and the phone's keypad comes up over the
bottom of the picture: the soft keys, C, 0 to 9, * and #. The d-pad moves
the highlight, A or B presses the key for as long as you hold it, and Y
moves the keypad to the top of the screen and back. Select and R together
put it away. While it is up, the game sees only the keys it presses.

New since 1.1.0

  • Game saves. A game keeps its saves on the phone's own C: drive.
    Until now that drive was erased at every start, so nothing outlived
    the Pocket's power. Each game's C: drive is now its save file,
    Saves/ngage/plasticbugs.ngage/<game>.sav on the card (1 MB). The core
    writes it a couple of seconds after the game saves, and when the
    Pocket's menu opens with a save still waiting. A game's first start on
    this release formats its new drive, as a new phone would, so that start
    is slower. Later starts skip that, and are quicker than on 1.1.0, which
    formatted the drive every time.
  • Add N-Gage games.html makes the same .img files as mkdrive.py,
    byte for byte, in the browser. It takes any number of game zips or
    unzipped game folders at once, checks SYM.ROM and saves it as
    sym.rom, and never overwrites a file already on the card.
  • Screen Effect. The Pocket allows 20 menu entries and data slots
    together, and the save slot is a new data slot. Scanlines (25, 50, 75%)
    and Shadow Mask (1x, 2x, 3x) are now options of one list, so the two
    can no longer be on at once.
  • mkdrive.py takes a zip of the game's folder, and a zip made on a
    Mac, as well as a zip of the card's contents. Snakes no longer needs
    --app.

What to expect

  • This build was tried on a Pocket before release: its tester
    reported that save games work. Which games, and whether the Analogizer
    was used, was not said; 1.1.0's Analogizer output is unchanged.
  • Seen on a Pocket: with 1.0.0, Virtua Cop, SSX: Out of Bounds and
    Puzzle Bobble VS play. With 0.3.1-alpha's build, The Elder Scrolls
    Travels: Shadowkey and The Sims Bustin' Out play, and Call of Duty
    plays slowly; with 0.3.0-alpha's, Pocket Kingdom plays well. With
    0.2.0-alpha's, Atari Masterpieces Vol. 1 and 2, Rayman 3 and The Roots
    play well. On the builds before it, Colin McRae Rally 2005 plays
    perfectly, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Ghost Recon play well, and
    Requiem of Hell starts after a long pause. Sonic N played on
    0.1.0-alpha. The games not named for 1.0.0 have not been reported on
    it or on this build yet.
  • The on-screen keypad has been checked in simulation (every key
    presses its own, and nothing else reaches the game), and has not been
    reported on from a Pocket.
  • Tested in the reference emulator only: of 54 games, 46 run for
    45 s past the boot logos with a picture and sound, with A and X pressed
    a few times from 30 s. Puzzle Bobble VS and Pandemonium reach their
    menus too and start their sound later.
  • Not yet compared with the phone. On the alphas, 3D games ran below
    the phone's frame rate; the heaviest may still.
  • Sound lags the picture by 32–64 ms.
  • Games take some 0.3 s longer to start: the phone's connection
    settings are written at boot.

Known problems

  • Reported from a Pocket with 0.3.0-alpha, and not reported on this
    build: Puzzle Bobble VS has no sound, though the game itself has sound.
  • Reported from a Pocket with 0.2.0-alpha, and not yet tried on this
    build, which is faster:
    • X-Men Legends II returns to the N-Gage logo partway through its
      attract mode. It needs a faster CPU: in the reference emulator it
      plays at 45 MIPS, and at 0.2.0-alpha's speed it starved its own view
      events until the phone's view server gave up on it.
    • Puyo Pop has no music in the game; its attract mode and intro have
      sound. It fell behind its music stream at 0.2.0-alpha's speed and
      dropped it for good.
  • Copy protection that checks the memory card the game was installed on
    stops Asphalt Urban GT 2, Warhammer 40,000: Glory in Death and One:
    the card here is an image, with nothing behind it to identify.
  • In the reference emulator, not yet tried on a Pocket: Civilization and
    Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory stop during startup, and the Payload trial
    does not get past its first screens.
  • The game keeps running behind the Pocket's menu (no pause).
  • No sleep or link port.
  • Key clicks and the phone's tone player are silent. Game music and effects
    play.
  • Bluetooth multiplayer (Snakes and others) has no radio and cannot start.

This build

file md5
Cores/plasticbugs.ngage/bitstream.rbf_r 0c74766f7471e7649a1fbd905d2cf75f
Assets/ngage/common/ngvm.bin 86c89494eae24bf2d0c5932e90dadc51

CPU at 80 MHz. docs/bringup.md in the source says what each screen
should look like and when, and what to report if it does not.